Guild Wars 2

Until they disclose drop rates and RNG formulas we can only speculate. They won’t disclose this information though, and anyway they stealth-tweak it every now and then. Just play the game how NCsoft wants you to play the game and you should be fine.
As for me, it also seemed to me that I was getting better drops if I came back to the game after being quite inactive

You have to be kidding us.

Lingering elements ???

JonPeters.5630:

I think this trait needs better wording. I hope you all understand why that trait would be wildly overpowered if it carried over everything particularly all 10% damage bonuses. You could simply slam through all attunements and then get 50% bonus damage. Similarly making other things work with this would requires those traits get lowered in the base case as well. I think this is a fine 15 point minor trait on its own and we can reword it and then discuss the merits of the other traits on their own.

To me, that is a better starting point for discussion than attempting to balance all of these effects with how they might work with a minor trait in Arcana. That would predicate the entire profession around that trait which is not what we want out of our minor traits.

Jon

With 10/20/0/10/15 (+15 points) you would be able to have 40% damage boost on vulnerable targets (not 50%) for less than 5 seconds (swapping cooldown) at the expense of two attunement cooldowns.

This does not seem soo unreasonable to me.

They butchered fractals.

Dub.1273:

Aswell as also your build, Aniera, isn’t the optimum in all situations. I’m slowly getting tired of repeating it.

I fully agree with Dub. Also Anierna’s arrogance is irritating.

chronometria.3708:

I rerolled warrior when I first heard about the AOE nerf. I knew there would be nothing good in this patch for my staff ele, but I take no joy in being proven right.

Even in WvW I see less and less elementalists. Its uncommon now to see ele aoe attacks during tower and keep sieges. They are almost all gone.

ooh man, that aoe nerf !!

AoE spells with a maximum number of targets will now count combatants that block or evade the attack towards that maximum.

Yeah it’s definitely making the ele worse than any other classes in the game, no doubt, despite the multiple buffs that were given to staff this patch.

/s

Hm

Yes I know, but it’s just good to actually see signs of attention from time to time. It’s probably childish but with the amount of suggestions (hint) that are being put out on this forum in posts, threads, signatures (hint), we just want to feel like we are being heard. It’s just good for the soul!

Link all capital city chat!

On a side note I found that actually our best tool to move is LH !
Basically use attunement swapping with elemental attunement, as well as glyph of elemental power, to give you swiftness and then spam LH’s 2 on cd.
Why such trick I can move almost as fast as a GS warrior.

Expect LH to be nerfed soon.

The thing is, even a 30 min cd will not prevent a 150+ people zerg to pop their elementals all at the same time in a boss fight (teq).

So the “server performance” issue is a lie.

Bad fix is bad.

Cool.

Does ANet plan on rewarding people for their skill rather than for mindless farm and achievements ??

Of course games do not sell a “win button” … what is the win in a pvp mmo game anyway?

Even if these P2W items are very minor they are P2W to a degree, and their sheer existence is enough to be blamed.

If I may insist, nobody has a problem with indirect loot?

Yes, I am interested in evaluating 30/30, I will tell you how I find it very soon.

I am very glad you enjoy D/F fresh air. More and more people are trying it, especially after the LH bugfix, and I strongly believe that they are right to do so.
Good luck climbing up the fractal levels!

Arc lightning’s damage is displayed in cumulative numbers. The number that appears on the last tick is the total damage that you have done during this cast.

Such a shame, people leveling up without experimenting …

There is no “best” weapon set, but there is a worse one: staff. It is simply underpowered in many aspect, at least until Anet buffs its air attacks.

Anyway you really should check DeKeys’ guide, her work is the reference for PvE elementalists.

Fuzzion.2504:

Remember the saying ? “Alt + F4 if you cant kill a staff ele”

I am pretty sure the AI can’t Alt + F4

Excelsior comrades!

I have just finished the alpha version of my new calculator. This calculator enables you to plug in your build, your rotation, and see what kind of damage it does. Easy and simple! But is it just an alpha.

I would like to get feedback on this calculator, any kind of feedback, so I can know what to work on first. If you are interested, could you please download it and try it?

Download link

Works best on Excel 2007. Function issues with Open Office’s Calc

Alternative download

Compatible with Excel 2003

Features
Current:
-Build calculator
-Out of combat and In combat stats
-Dps calculator (direct damage)
To come:
-Rotation calculator

Note
The calculator is in its very first version. It is very far from complete. So far I have only made the framework for future improvements, and I have only included the necessary information to calculate direct damage dps from the most common builds. There are four tabs: Build 1 is a realistic calculation for my Fresh Air dagger build, Build 2 is the highest dps an elem can achieve (LH), Root is the raw data used for all calculations an Rotation is just an example of how I calculate my coefficient per second figures. You need to plug in your coefficient per second figure in the build tabs to calculate your dps (in a future update I will make a rotation calculator to do this for you). You also need to take a look at the number in orange.

If you have any questions or remarks, please let me know! I look forward to making this tool complete, and I can only do so with your help.

Hey, remember that time when they said they would release a fotm leaderboard?
And then that time when they said they were waiting to gather more data before releasing it?

Aaaah good times

Elementalists rock in PvE

Actually it seems to me that staff deals decent damage in its fire rotation, and more damage than scepter in its FA rotation. When I say “decent” I mean for elementalists…

I don’t complain that warriors > elem often because I think it is not really true in PvE, and I often say that since we often have 10 in earth we just need signet of earth to be a heavy but…

Just crunching numbers for fun:
Warrior’s base hp = 9212
Elem base hp = 1645
Difference in hp = 7567
Difference in vitality = 756 (rounding down because I am a gentleman of course)

Hm interesting number, right?
It’s almost exactly the amount of one minor stats we get from a fully ascended gear. Take berzerker gear for example, it gives you 1073 power, 70 crit damage, and 734 precision.
So basically warriors have a full set’s minor worth of stats more than elems.

Now we can talk about class balance all we want, you have to keep this in mind.

Edit: oh and if we take the armor difference (291) as well, and add it to the vitality difference we get 1047, which is almost a full set’s major worth of stats

This is a response to the new addition of a sticky message from the mods. This message is telling us to report profession bugs in the forum bug section. I think this is not a good idea:

- it is very easy to just check our profession forum and see the bugs that we have reported. We have a thread for this that is very active and well maintained, once stickied it would be a click away.

- new elementalists can have a better access to this thread. They can learn a lot this way, and they do not create topics that are unnecessary.

- almost no player check the game bug forum. The community would be much less responsive

Wouldn’t it be easier just to sticky the thread we have here and then mirror it on the game bug forum?

“an expansion worth of content” ?

I’ve heard that before …

Of course not! That would be working as described

From the twitch stream yesterday (balance preview):

- burning speed evades
- frozen burst is a blast finisher

I am trying to not get back to this game but when I see buffs like this, buffs I have asked for long time ago, I cannot help but thinking that the devs want me back

Full zerker D/F 10/30/0/20/10 here, you rare not alone my friend!

Hey but wait, it’s ok, we have this awesome perk !!

I’m frustrated today.

Ok.
I think flood control is a very effective punitive measure. Its implementation has had drastic effects on the quality of posts in the forums. The fear of having an increased flood control timer acts as a powerful deterrent against posters who tend to “break the rules of the code of conduct”.
It seems to me that this measure is timely. It is indeed a very good response against the increasing number of posts expressing ever growing frustration and distrusts in a manner that “breaks the rules” towards Anet. “Flood control” has definitely prevented a lot of underlying concerns to ever reach the public, or the devs, due to them “breaking the rules”.
In this sense I praise the mods for their inventiveness and efficiency. I am sure that the forumers feel safer and that the developers have been shielded from all illegal negativity. The management team at Anet must be proud of their protective moderation team and they are right to be so.

Is it allowed to discuss the causes of flood control, such as the relation between infraction points and the code of conduct?

• 7. Mechanics

You have to train until you know exactly what you are doing with your spells, until you feel the cooldowns under your skin, until you become the elementalist
The combat mechanics of a fresh air build are very interesting. Be prepared to execute numerous actions per minutes. Coffee is advised, Italian of course.

Use of fresh air
The beauty of this trait is that it does not only recharge your attunement cooldown but also its swapping cooldown. Normally when you swap to an attunement you cannot swap to an other for 1.625 seconds (base recharge time, reduced by arcana). Fresh air bypasses this.
In combat you will spend most of your time in the air attunement. Every time the fresh air internal cooldown is going to be up (every 5 seconds) you can swap to an other attunement for its specific purpose and swap back to air almost instantly due to our high crit chance (berzerker gear and fury). This allows you to be able to use all your skills, benefit from strong buffs, and deal good damage at the same time.

Optimal rotations
There is no such thing. Optimal rotations are just a mental experiment of what skills to chain in order to do the highest consistent damage possible. In game, you will almost never have the opportunity to unfold these rotations because you will have to dodge, react to the unexpected, and adapt. However they are a good measure of what to aim to do in order to get close to maximum damage output. Optimal rotations are guidelines.

• Normal rotation: start in air, swap to fire, burning speed, drake’s breath (if target isn’t perma-burning already), swap to air during cast, lightning whip 4 times, swap to earth, ring of earth, swap to air during cast, lightning whip 4 times, swap to water, cone of cold, swap to air during cast, lightning whip 4 times, repeat.

• Optimized rotation with persisting flames. If your build allows for it, you can use the combined effect of the fire field from burning speed’s trail and the blasts finishers from comet and magnetic wave to give might and fury for your group. This leads us to a two-phased cycle: start in air, swap to fire, cast burning speed, swap to air during cast, lightning whip 4 times, swap to earth, cast ring of earth and magnetic wave (blast), swap to air and cast lightning whip (7 times) until fire is back up. The second phase of the cycle is the same except you swap to water instead of earth and blast your fire field with comet.

Remember to maximize the effect of your traits: electric discharge, arcane fury, sunspot, etc. It is interesting to notice that our rotations generate many hits per second (often more than 2) which is most beneficial for traits like weak spot or burning precision.

• 8. How to use this guide

I am very often posting in this thread to give updates on how to achieve more with the elementalist. I can not go into great details in the first posts of this guide due to character limitations, so I highly advise you to follow the ongoing discussions. Also feel free to ask me anything or contribute in any way: by working together we can all get better

• 9. DPS Calculator

You can find my DPS calculator (the Zalculator) at the following link:
https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B88y8fHnpBfZRnJRdVNqVC1MYXc&usp=sharing
(Requires Excel 2007 or later)

This tool is in its alpha stage. It is functional but not yet complete. I will provide a guide for its use as soon as possible.

• 10. Conclusion

Adapt. Only the fittest will survive!
Make choices, and think ahead. Ultimately what makes you a good player is using the right skill at the right moment, it’s not your traits, not your gear, not your runes and sigils. So I am just giving you guidelines here, and I will be glad to discuss anything with anyone!

Time to level up the elementalist community!

Sincere thanks to Haviz.1340 for his enriching guidance.

• 11. Annex

Elementalist skill data

They butchered fractals.

It’s ok bro, once you reach the end game everything is resolved

Actually we are quite relaxed, aren’t we?
This forum has become a troll forum, we even asked to rename it but the post was deleted

I think they should add a bonus level when you reach fractal 80.
Once a day instead of the level 80 fractal you would enter a flat land full of frightened dredges with 1 hp running away from you in slow motion, you would be given a big fat hammer that makes a huge blood bath animation every time you smash a dredge into the ground. There would be a 5 minutes time limit for the level (no goal) at the end of which you would be given 50 silver for each dredge murdered. A bonus 30 silver would be awarded for each children or female dredge kill as a reward for putting an end to their breeding potential.

wait there are no female dredges … suspicious …

The amount of QQ here is too kitten low!!
No seriously we all love the class, that’s why we are so vocal about it

1. The Ascension Challenge (permanent project)

Current group challenge: “Embracing the Cold”, 23rd of September 2013,
Kill Frost in Caudecus Manor explorable path 1 (check details below)

Current solo challenge: “On His Level”, the 23rd of October 2013:
Fight and defeat the Berserker Abomination “on his level”

Rewards: eternal glory and prestige with your name on the scoreboard !

Check out the past challenge history

Current group challenge

Challenge master: Emanuel.9781
“Embracing the Cold”, 23rd of September 2013:
Kill Frost in Caudecus Manor explorable path 1

• Melee only, no ranged weapons/summons/minions/phantasms or attacking from range allowed at all, any weapon is fine
• No form of condition removal or -X% condition duration food allowed(Other nourishments are fine)
• Racial Utility/Elite skills only(Healing skills are your choice, only healing skills that also remove conditions aren’t allowed for this)
• No Projectile reflection/absorb skills(Warrior shield/sword block and guardian shield 5 are an exception)
• Must fight him in his spawn-area, no using line of sight to move him away/to ignore rocket turrets

Current solo challenge

Current challenge master: durend.6237
“On His Level”, the 23rd of October 2013:
Fight and defeat the Berserker Abomination “on his level”

• no armor
• no utilities/elite (healing is fine unless you want the extra challenge)
• no tranquilizer guns
• only one main hand melee weapon allowed
• optional: you may have 1 ranged weapon on swap for the berserker states, if so, only auto attacks may be used and it must be swapped back to your melee option within a reasonable time of the berserker state ending (5~ seconds)
• Since Engineer’s lack a melee option, they can use the Tool kit’s first 3 attacks for their melee option and switch to rifle/pistol when the Abomination enters the berserker state.

Good luck!

2. Scoreboards

The winners of challenges and contests on all projects will have their name written here for everybody to admire and praise their greatness. If you are looking for eternal fame, here is the place you can get it!

Allow me to point out that renown guilds are closely monitoring these projects. The activities here enable for talent scouting, which can lead to exclusive recruitment offers. You’ve been informed

_

Ascension Challenge

Format:
points) name

Guilds
1) rT

Players
1) Agony.3542 Anubarak.3012 durend.6237 Element.5647 Emanuel.9781 Molch.2078 Sanderinoa.8065 Wethospu.6437

_

Champion Solo Contest

Contest ongoing

To be completely honest I have given this quite some thought and the best change I can find for the elementalist is with lingering elements.
-Make it a natural mechanic of the class: attunements linger for ~3s
-Change the minor arcane trait so that it increases this duration to ~7s
-Make it work with all attunement bonuses

Think about it and you will see how interesting this change is.
With such mechanic, the attunement-specific traits which are usually lackluster will be useful. We will be able to “combo” attunement specific traits.

Then if I was to really push my suggestions I would say we need a mechanic similar to that of fresh air for fire, but less easy. For example: each instance of your burning that damages your enemies reduce your fire attunement cooldown by ~2s.
This would make fire very viable for PvP (combo with One With Fire and the new lingering elements for example) as well as an interesting choice for PvE.

Honestly I cannot think of more interesting/balanced(slight buffs)/thematic changes, if I was a developer I would not hesitate!

With my elem I intentionally enter groups with LFG saying “only warriors/guardians” because I’m a bad bad kitten

3. Past Ascension Challenge history

Check out the feats of strength that lie behind the legendary names on the scoreboard!

_

Group challenges

1) “The Slave Driver with tied hands”, 20th of September 2013:
Kill the Slave Driver in Citadel of Flame explorable path 1 with only off-hand weapons equipped in your group.
All skills are allowed for as long as you do not have main hand skills available (so no conjured weapons, no transformations, for example)

Challenge completed by rT on the 21st of September 2013
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDXFK3STFSE

2) “The Russian rabbit roulette”, 21st of September 2013:
Challenge master: Sanderinoa.8065 [rT]
Finish the Uncategorized Fractal’s champion fight (right after the first set of harpies) by killing the rabbit last.
The fractal level has to be at least 28.
No consumables allowed apart from nourishment.
Kiting the rabbit out of the room is not allowed.

Challenge completed by Emanuel.9781 on the 23rd of September 2013
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tEC6u4CgDs&feature=youtu.be

_

Solo Challenges

1) “Green, super greeeen”, the 11th of October 2013
Aggro and kill three orrian drakes in Arah explorable
No reflections/absorption allowed.
No movement other that backward allowed! (Dodge has to be backward, movement skills are nor restricted. Basically you should just not press any other normal movement key than backward)

Challenge completed by Wethospu.6437 on the 15th of October 2013
http://youtu.be/tSXsXPo9f2M

2)“Super Thrashmaster”, the 17th of October 2013
Solo the new Aetherblade Assault path up to Ooze escort.

Completed by durend.6237 on the 23rd oc October 2013
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFbSv_8hyM8&feature=youtu.be

4. Time-specific Projects

Ongoing:

Just use all the weapons you have: bring lots of people here, talk about RTL and lightning hammer, +1 on every post, we can make reply to us!

Hell we could even break the forum rules and link here all the posts we have made in the past, it worked in some other forums, it can work here.

Yes you are wrong. The stacking limit only applies to weakness and a few other non-damaging conditions.

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Lian Olsam.9541:

Evasive arcana on fire-air-earth adept and attunement
Cd range 11-8 on attun swap
elemental attunement on 5 of arcana
renewed stamina on adept

Make those change and u will unlock every kind of builds, sadly to say but imo every one wanna those traits at any cost… it s a must have for any ele build… otherwise this topic is only gossip… u wanna make more viable build just do this modify

I’ve always personally felt as well that Elemental Attunement is a class defining trait. I’ve been arguing to make it baseline or to bring it back down to tier one but the decision we’ve made instead is to bring Renewing Stamina back down to adept instead. This will prevent the dps ele nerf and even though we might all perceive that EA is a “staple” trait we do luckily have options to trait up instead to make up for the loss if you wish to spend points elsewhere. [Elemental Shielding, Zephyr’s Boon, Soothing Mist, etc. etc.] and yes… I know its more than one trait to make up for one but at least they are there and accessible low in other trait lines.

Our hope is not to destroy builds but to make more. Right now the way it looks for Elementalists in PvP is that most builds will still be the same, maybe with a little less AOE condition removal, but there will be more accessible options when going higher in the Fire, Air, and Earth trees.

I personally can’t wait for the Soothing Mist + Cleansing Water synergy. I think I will be enough for me to opt out of taking Cleansing Wave.

Sorry but it is not really like you had a choice: moving renewing stamina to master would simply destroy the ele both in PvP and PvE.

And it is not like we are shining at the moment.

The end game is about ending the game: quit it before you get too attached!

haviz.1340:

lordkrall.7241:

So what content is it your big group of players want that does not exist in the game?

Something harder than pressing 1.

Dude … you don’t even need to press 1 ! There’s the auto attack.
“I swung a sword, I swung a sword again Hey! I swung it again, that’s great”

One dude made a suggestion that was very interesting but quickly buried in the suggraveyard forum.

He was promoting the idea that a significant part of the gold rewards from a dungeon should be tied to how often this dungeon is run by the players. This would decrease the incentive to farm CoF, and increase the incentive to do other dungeons. I thought it was very clever. Unfortunately I cannot give you the link to the suggestion thread because it is contrary to forum rules.

haviz.1340:

And this is why this game goes downhill spectacularly fast.

They are working for scarlet

I really like having 15s cooldowns on attunement swaps, it makes me have to strategically think ahead and plan the way I am going to use them.

Since high level fractals are going away tomorrow (and will probably return only in one year time, or never) wouldn’t it be awesome to have a video compilation of the best feats of skills achieved so far?

I am thinking of things like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0V03lwZKW_k
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owKbxqNPwn0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CndcoIwxAcs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYpAUwn_wfY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFkCvupAJQY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVHRanhbbiI

Also I encourage all elite players to rush and do similar challenges so we have more videos to add to this list. If I have missed some please post them here.

Can someone work on making such video compilation? Maybe add some commentaries, let’s make this tribute beautiful

NERF RTL !!!!

Oh sorry I thought we were just throwing random hate at eles.